There is nothing more demoralizing than trekking across a big box store in search of a price scanner.
In John's Creek, Georgia, we crossed the store in search of a price scanner only to find that they had been removed from nearly every pole with a sign. After reaching the second purported price scanner only to find an empty pole, my wife set her basket on the floor and we walked out.
Gerting pissed and walking out is just one way that we save money when shopping at Walmart.
This past weekend, we didn't set foot in any big box retail store. As a consequence, we saved a lot of money. There must be a life lesson in their somewhere.
Ikea makes it hard to just pop in to buy something quickly. They've arranged it so you naturally wander through a maze of home furnishings. Ypu usually feel like a mouse on a quest for cheese. But last week, we went through a little backwards.
First, we went to the cash registers, found a gap in the lines and went in through the exit. Then we went directly to scratch and dent. Then we walked through the marketplace. We bought blue bags, chocolate bars, batteries, and hand towels. We spent less than $20.
I guess that's why they want us to go through the whole store!
We popped into Wal-Mart in the wee hours of the morning. It was around 2:30 a.m. and the back-to-school crowds had thinned out. Amazingly, we did see one family with a kid in the store. They are sure going to have fun getting him on the bus this week.
We didn't see much that we needed or wanted. But, the store was a fairly safe place for a late night walk. As we strolled through the aisles, we didn't see much that we needed or wanted. It was a strange feeling. We did a quick walk around the store and wandered back out to the car.
Like many consumers now, we just don't have much extra money to spend on new stuff. Wal-Mart reminds us that we are in the cheapest store with the cheapest things. We felt poor. We found it upsetting that the only safe place to walk in the area late at night was Wal-Mart. My wife and I shook our heads on the way out.
"I'd like to get rid of the Wal-Mart card," she said.
"Yeah," I said. "Let's kill it."
We don't shop at big warehouse club stores. There are only two people and a dog in our household. We live in an apartment. We don't have the space required to store a two month supply of anything. It only makes sense to buy in bulk if you have storage space and a big enough appetite to eat all that food. You can't buy anything that will spoil in bulk unless you can actually consume it all.
We find that it makes much more sense for us to buy small packages that we can consume in a reasonable amount of time. That drives us towards stores that have smaller package sizes and low prices. We find ourselves in Target, Aldi, Trader Joe's, and traditional grocery stores like Publix on a regular basis. Plus, who really needs to buy books, a printer, and an exercise bike when shopping for groceries.
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| Kmart in Cobb County, Georgia |
Can you imagine a world with nothing but Wal-Mart and Target? It would suck. They would only sell the items that their computers deem most profitable. Prices would rise and the diversity of products offered would decline. We would find yourself in situations like my wife and I found ourselves in a few years ago. We were looking for a lampshade and we found one. But, Target didn't have lamp harps so we had to abandon the project.
We need o keep diversity alive, buy shopping at all the different stores. Buyng something from Sears, Kmart, and JC Penny helps keep them in business.
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